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COMING IN OCTOBER. Jealousy, loyalty, betrayal, revenge, romance...sound like the makings of a gripping novel? Think again. Rick McIntyre's new book, The Rise of Wolf 8, is the first in a promised trilogy of books based on his observations of the largely successful reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995. A biologist and park ranger, McIntyre has logged more than 100,000 hours watching the wolves. If this first stunning and beautiful book is any indication of what's to come, we're in for a treat. Recommended by Kelly

Originally written in 1994, Charles Bowden’s, The Red Caddy, is the first biography of Edward Abbey to appear for some time. Like the stark beauty of the desert Abbey defended, Bowden’s lucid prose tells the truth about the man, whose racist, misogynistic image so many biographers and followers alike have tried to expunge. Instead of trying to make Abbey palatable, Bowden trusts that the power of his friend’s life, warts intact, merits an honest depiction. Caddy is freshly relevant given the recent #metoo movement.

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Published: University of Texas Press - April 25th, 2018

A passionate advocate for preserving wilderness and fighting the bureaucratic and business forces that would destroy it, Edward Abbey (1927-1989) wrote fierce, polemical books such as Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang that continue to inspire environmental activists.

Though many books have been written about climate change, in Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, Elizabeth Rush offers not a scientist’s view but that of an artist translating statistics into elegy for the estuaries, the salt marshes, the shoreline wetlands of the world, and more particularly, of her childhood home. By speaking the names of the beings, both human and otherwise, that are vanishing before our eyes as shorelines become inundated, she faces her own grief and helps her readers to do so as well. Recommended by Kelly

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018 A GUARDIAN, NPR's SCIENCE FRIDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018

American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee reads like a novel but it's nonfiction--well-reported, in-depth nonfiction that presents an intimate portrait of a beautiful creature. The book is ostensibly a biography of Oh-Six, a female wolf who leads a fearsome Yellowstone pack. But the story it tells is much bigger: politics, livelihood, regionalism, class, survival, and landscape all figure into this tragic and compelling tale. The book is part legal thriller, part biography, part nature book, and part rural cultural analysis, but it's 100% unforgettable. Recommended by Danny

Farming is a gamble. The new book, This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm, makes this abundantly clear. Author Ted Genoways alternates between discussions of the common challenges facing small family farms with chapters focusing on two Nebraska families struggling to make ends meet while sorting out the vagaries of climate, consumer demand, and government subsidies and regulations. A moving, painful, and important read about a topic that should be a far larger part of the national dialogue. Recommended by Kelly

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Published: W. W. Norton & Company - September 19th, 2017

The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a small ranch, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife's fifth-generation homestead in York County, Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their small family farm--and their entire way of life--are under siege.

The epigraph for Rebecca Dunham's fourth book of poems, Cold Pastoral, is a quote by Muriel Rukeyser. It fits. Rukeyser, whose 1938 poem Book of the Dead chronicled the human cost of the Hawk's Nest mining disaster, is a clear antecedent to Dunham's poetry. Centering on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Cold Pastoral investigates the human cost of these calamities with a deft hand. In the collection's final poem, Dunham writes,

Who will witness what follows danger's first aftermath?
Who will document the crisis that bleeds on and on?

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Published: Milkweed Editions - March 14th, 2017

A searing, urgent collection of poems that brings the lyric and documentary together in unparalleled ways--unmasking and examining the specter of manmade disaster. The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Hurricane Katrina. The Flint water crisis. Thousands dead, lives destroyed, and a natural world imperiled by human choices.

In a series of linked essays about his childhood in rural Edgefield, South Carolina, Lanham reclaims an environmental love and ethos for people of color. He is a self-described "eco-addict," who loves nature because "I've yet to have a wild creature question my identity.

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Published: Milkweed Editions - October 11th, 2016

"In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored." From these fertile soils of love, land, identity, family, and race emerges The Home Place, a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist and professor of ecology J. Drew Lanham.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal. The short answer is--we're getting there. The gist of this fascinating book is that we've long been using the wrong measures for things like "consciousness," "self-awareness," and "intention," all once considered qualities possessed only by humans. But as the many experiments that primatologist de Waal recounts show, if you use the proper controls and keep an open mind, you'll find animals are far more "like" us than we give them credit--which changes everything. Recommended by Kelly

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Published: W. W. Norton & Company - April 25th, 2016

What separates your mind from an animal's? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future--all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet's preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been disproven outright, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition.

Lovers of Terry Tempest Williams' writing (and those who never read her before--these are usually the only two categories) rejoice. In time for the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, her new book The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks chronicles one of America's best-known and beloved nature writer's visits to twelve national parks and monuments.

Dan Flores in Coyote America: A Natural & Supernatural History has given us an “illuminating biography of an extraordinary animal.” The coyote has been depicted both in cartoons and as a deity in Native American mythology. Until we began ranching and herding on the plains, they lived alongside humans. After complaints by ranchers, the US. government started eradicating wolves, and when coyotes replaced them, they became the next target.